to abrogate the allowance for delaying prayer as on the day of the Trench. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Offer prayer at its prescribed time.”

The Quran and Sunnah indicate that there are “five” prayer times under normal circumstances, but “three” when there is a valid excuse. Thus, when someone with a valid excuse combines two prayers—Zuhr and ‘Asr, or Maghrib and ‘Ishā’—he has performed each prayer within its prescribed time, not after its time has expired. For this reason, according to most scholars, he need not specifically intend to combine prayers or to shorten them. This is the position of Mālik, Abū Hanīfah, and Ahmad in his well-known explicit statements, and it is the view preferred by Abū Bakr ‘Abd al-‘Azīz.

For this same reason, the majority of scholars, including Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī, and Ahmad, hold that if a woman’s menstruation ends near the end of the day, she must perform both Zuhr and ‘Asr; and if it ends near the end of the night, she must perform both Maghrib and ‘Ishā’. This has been transmitted from ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn ‘Awf, Abū Hurayrah, and Ibn ‘Abbās. This is because the two prayers share a common time when there is a valid excuse. Thus, if her menstruation ends near the end of the day, the time for Zuhr still remains, so she performs it before ‘Asr. If her menstruation ends near the end of the night, the time for Maghrib still remains in circumstances involving a valid excuse, so she performs it before ‘Ishā’. For this reason, Allah sometimes mentions five prayer times and sometimes three